Knack

Without ever really doing anything wrong, Knack has struggled to impress us. When we got our hands on the upcoming Japan Studio platformer earlier in the year, we enjoyed the overarching premise, but didn’t feel that it was doing enough to deserve its status at the forefront of the PlayStation 4’s launch lineup.

Fortunately, the title’s looking a lot better at GamesCom. While the gameplay is still fairly simplistic, the visuals have improved enormously since E3. It’s not going to sit alongside Killzone: Shadow Fall and Watch Dogs, but its colourful locales certainly offer something a little different. There appears to be plenty of variety to the level design, too, as evidenced by the lush meadows and gloomy catacombs glimpsed in the video below.

It’s certainly not going to appeal to everyone’s tastes, but we’ve got a lot more confidence in the game after seeing this footage. We’re desperate for the developer to add some smoke effects to the fading foes, though. Watching the creatures just evaporate into nothing looks really odd – especially on a console as powerful as the PS4.

[source youtube.com]